Flight prices... what the frack

[pfarber]

I know all about the wacky wonderful world of bullshit airline prices... but dammit if it didn't almost bite me in the ass.

So I need to travel internationally and you always hear that you should book 90+ days out. That's nice, except when you want to travel short notice.

So I google flight my itinerary and get a few prices from multiple airports.. all about $700-$750 round trip. Not sure if the price will go up or down I wait a few days and watch google price tracker. 5 days later the price of one flight DOUBLES ($778 -> $1532) and another goes up about 20% ($706 -> $793) FOR THE SAME AIRPORT. The only thing that separates the flights is about 4 hours between take off times.

Fudge that.

So I widen my search to airports within 200 miles. Find a flight on the same day, in the morning, for $531, each leg has a layover (outbound 43 minutes, inbound 3 hours) and I even added in a seat upgrade to premium economy because one of the jets is just to small (I know... I've flown the type before). So still got my round trip airfare for under $600.

Sure, I have a 2 hour vs a 1 hour drive.. but all told for the price savings its a no brainer. I'm still going to follow the prices and see if I get the best price or not... but I don't think I can beat $531 for an international flight.

What's really crappy is that the airlines have ticket prices so screwed up that you actually get in kind of a bidding war with yourself. Most countries airline prices are so much more stable and not subject to these wild swings.

[pfarber]

Man what a difference a week makes.

My $531 dollar flight? LOL not any more:

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My original flight has also doubled in price:

sh2.JPG (10.97 KiB) Viewed 6766 times

DAYM!

[pfarber]

LOL 31 days to go...

flight 55.JPG (11.31 KiB) Viewed 6750 times

$531 to almost double. Shits wack, yo.

flight56.JPG (50.03 KiB) Viewed 6749 times

Here's one ticket that actually doubled... then came down to 50% of original price.